Muslims in India may be on a 'party line'
Muslims in India may be on a 'party line'Israel news photo: Flash 90

Muslim community leaders in India are being watched, and their phone conversations are being held on a “party line,” according to the latest issue of the English weekly magazine, Outlook.

However, it's all Israel's fault, the Muslim leadership claims.

The report, which caused a flurry of outrage, said intelligence agents have been tapping and taping the phone calls of top community leaders in Muslim areas of Delhi, Lucknow and Hyderabad. Leaders of various political parties were targeted as well.

 Political Affairs Secretary of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Mujtaba Farooq blamed the Jewish State for the violations of privacy. “The phone tapping of Muslim areas is the result of India's friendship with Israel,” he said.



This all shows that the government doubts the loyalty of Muslims and looks at them as anti-national.

The National Technical Research Organization (NTRO) is one of the agencies that has allegedly been carrying out the wiretapping. NTRO was created in 2005 following the Kargil war to deal with the technical aspects of intelligence-gathering. “The most intrusive of these systems are the off-the-air GSM/CDMA monitoring devices... sources estimate 90 such systems to have bought so far, enabling intelligence agents to track, hear and record cellphone conversations at will without even approaching the telecom companies,” reported the magazine.

An intelligence agent explained in the interview that the systems were being used “in the hope that we might pick up critical conversations” that could lead to terrorists.

Hidden cameras have also apparently been installed in some Muslim areas, said Dr. Tasleem Rahmani, president of the Muslim Political Council of India, who expressed the community's outrage: “This all shows that the government doubts the loyalty of Muslims and looks at them as anti-national.”  

A Muslim parliamentarian, Asaduddin Owaisi, called on the government to tighten its controls over the “secret and intelligence agencies” and to bring them “under accountability regime.”